Sarah Rodigari & Annie-B Parson - May 1st, 2015

Friday Reading Series Sarah Rodigari creates performances that address economies of exchange pertaining to socio-political engagement, shared authorship and new institutional critique. Her projects take the form of lecture, text, video and collaborations. She recently published a chapter on performance art, and sympathetic magic for the publication Travel and Transformation and co-edited the book Going Down, an anthology of contemporary Sydney performance. Rodigari has presented work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Melbourne International Arts Festival (Australia), South Project (Indonesia), PACT Zollverein (Germany), Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, The National Review of Live Art (UK), Anti-Contemporary Arts Festival (Finland), and SOMA (Mexico). She is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Art at the University of Wollongong and a founding member of the collective Field Theory. In an ongoing fascination with form, choreographer Annie-B Parson decided to “choreograph” the language of the naturalistic film script: Terms of Endearment. To do this she studied poetic forms, and then attacked the screenplay with such weaponry as trochees, spondees, tetrameters and pantouns. This became the stylistic hub of the text for Big Dance Theater’s 2014 piece, Alan Smithee Directed This Play: Triple Feature. On May 1, Parson will attempt to reconstruct the poetics she applied to the text, and read some of the results. Parson is the co-artistic director of Big Dance. She also makes dance for pop music (David Byrne; St. Vincent); opera (Nico Muhly), film and theater. She has a work in the repertory of The Martha Graham Co., and is creating a solo for ballerina Wendy Whelan. Her awards include: Olivier nomination, Guggenheim Fellowship, Doris Duke Artist Award; USA Artist Award/Ford Fellow; Foundation for Contemporary Art Award; The Jacob’s Pillow Award; Lucille Lortel nominations; Bessie Award; OBIE Award.